Chapter 10 - THE FATHER BENEATH THE RIVER
The boat vanished into the rain before Lucas could reach it.
Grace stopped him from entering the water.
“You will drown.”
“That was my father.”
“It may have been.”
“You said he was alive.”
“I said the man in Edmund’s coffin was not Edmund. I have never been able to prove who survived.”
Adrian stood on the riverbank, one hand pressed against his shoulder.
“I saw him at the clinic.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lucas demanded.
“Because I believed I was hallucinating.”
Grace moved toward a hidden vehicle beneath the trees.
“We cannot stay here.”
The three drove to a farmhouse twenty miles north of Blackwater. It belonged to a retired surgeon named Dr. Eleanor Shaw, one of Grace’s few trusted allies.
Eleanor examined Adrian’s shoulder with a portable scanner.
“There is a foreign object near the old wound,” she said. “Small. Metallic.”
“A transmitter?” Lucas asked.
“Possibly.”
“Can you remove it?”
“Not safely without a proper operating room.”
Grace stood near the window, watching the road.
“We don’t have time.”
Adrian buttoned his shirt.
“You spent three years tracking a dead man, and this is all you have?”
Grace turned.
“I have financial transfers, voice recordings, shell companies, and eyewitness reports.”
“But no photograph of Edmund.”
“Every camera near him fails.”
“How convenient.”
Lucas sat at the kitchen table with Grace’s letter before him.
“What exactly happened after you left the hotel?”
Grace’s eyes moved toward him.
“I hid.”
“For three years?”
“For three days, at first. I believed Reed would be arrested once Margaret delivered the evidence.”
“The drive was replaced.”
“I learned that later.”
“Then why didn’t you contact me?”
“Because I saw you meeting Reed outside the hospital.”
“He was leading the search for you.”
“I thought you were working with him.”
Lucas stared at her.
“You thought I betrayed you?”
“For nine days.”
“And after that?”
“By then, Reed had shown Charles Crowe a photograph of me alive. They threatened Lily.”
“What kind of threat?”
“A photograph of her sleeping. Taken from inside Vale House.”
Lucas felt sick.
“That was when you built the cameras?”
“I had installed some before the crash. I expanded the system afterward with Margaret’s help.”
“You could have told me.”
“If you knew, Reed would see it.”
“You did not trust me to protect my own daughter.”
“I did not trust anyone to defeat a network that had existed longer than our marriage.”
Grace came closer.
“I am sorry.”
Lucas stood.
“Sorry does not return three years.”
“No.”
“It does not erase Lily’s nightmares.”
“No.”
“It does not explain Vanessa.”
Grace glanced toward Adrian.
“Vanessa came to me eighteen months ago. She had discovered her father was using the Crowe Foundation to transfer money.”
“She volunteered to help?”
“She wanted immunity.”
“And you told her to enter my life.”
“I told her to attend the charity auction. I believed you might trust her enough to give her access to Vale records.”
Lucas laughed without humor.
“You recruited a woman to manipulate me.”
“I never told her to fall in love with you.”
“Did she?”
Grace’s expression changed.
“That is not relevant.”
“It is to me.”
Eleanor entered from the next room carrying an old leather folder.
“You all need to see this.”
She placed the folder on the table.
Inside was a death certificate for Edmund Vale.
The document was dated eight years earlier.
Beneath it was another record.
A private surgical report created six months after Edmund’s funeral.
Patient name: Edmund Vale.
Procedure: facial reconstruction following severe burns.
Lucas looked at Eleanor.
“You treated him.”
“No. My husband did.”
“Where is he?”
“He died four years ago.”
“Did he ever tell you what Edmund looked like afterward?”
“No. But he left this.”
She removed a sealed envelope.
On the front was written:
For Lucas Vale, when Grace returns from the dead.
Lucas opened it.
Inside was a photograph of three men standing in a surgical room.
One was Eleanor’s husband.
One was Edmund.
The third was Charles Crowe.
On the back was a date and a location.
Vale House, east tower.
Beneath it were the words:
The wrong brother inherited the face.
Adrian read the sentence.
“What does that mean?”
Grace went pale.
She took the photograph and held it beneath the lamp.
Then she pointed to Edmund’s left hand.
He wore a heavy signet ring bearing the Vale crest.
Lucas’s father had always worn it.
Adrian looked down at his own hand.
He wore the same ring.
May you like
Margaret had given it to him after Edmund’s funeral, saying it had been found among their father’s belongings.
Grace whispered, “The ring was never in the coffin.”
